LOUNGER. Yonder comes Elder Simms. You all better squat that rabbit. They’ll be having you all up in the church for playin’ cards. (FRANK grabs up the cards and puts them in his pocket quickly. Everybody picks up the money and looks unconcerned as the preacher enters. Enter ELDER SIMMS with his two prim-looking little children by the hand.) ELDER SIMMS. How do, children. Right warm for this time in November, ain’t it? VOICE. Yes sir, Reverend, sho is. How’s Sister Simms? SIMMS. She’s feelin’ kinda po’ly today. (Goes on in store with his children) VOICE. (Whispering loudly) Don’t see how that great big ole powerful woman could be sick. Look like she could go bear huntin’ with her fist. ANOTHER VOICE. She look jus’ as good as you-all’s Baptist pastor’s wife. Pshaw, you ain’t seen no big woman, nohow, man. I seen one once so big she went to whip her little boy and he run up under her belly and hid six months ’fore she could find him. ANOTHER VOICE. Well, I knowed a woman so little that she had to get up on a soap box to look over a grain of sand. (REV. SIMMS comes out of store, each child behind him sucking a stick of candy.) SIMMS. (To his children) Run on home to your mother and don’t get dirty on the way. (The two children start primly off down the street but just out of sight one of them utters a loud cry.) SIMMS’S CHILD. (Off stage) Papa, papa. Nunkie’s trying to lick my candy. SIMMS. I told you to go on and leave them other children alone. VOICE ON PORCH. (Kidding) Lum, whyn’t you tend to your business. (TOWN MARSHALL rises and shoos the children off again.) LUM. You all varmints leave them nice chillun alone. LIGE. (Continuing the lying on porch) Well, you all done seen so much, but I bet you ain’t never seen a snake as big as the one I saw when I was a boy up in middle Georgia. He was so big couldn’t hardly move his self. He laid in one spot so long he growed moss on him and everybody thought he was a log, till one day I set down on him and went to sleep, and when I woke up that snake done crawled to Florida. (Loud laughter.) FRANK. (Seriously) Layin’ all jokes aside though now, you all remember that rattlesnake I killed last year was almost as big as that Georgia snake. VOICE. How big, you say it was, Frank? FRANK. Maybe not quite as big as that, but jus’ about fourteen feet. VOICE. (Derisively) Gimme that lyin’ snake. That snake wasn’t but four foot long when you killed him last year and you done growed him ten feet in a year. ANOTHER VOICE. Well, I don’t know about that. Some of the snakes around here is powerful long. I went out in my front yard yesterday right after the rain and killed a great big ol’ cottonmouth.